An illness termed "radium jaw" (similar to "phossy jaw") was first seen in the mid-1920 amongst young women who worked in clock-dial painting factories that used radium to create the luminouspaint. These women had the habit of licking their brushes to make the bristles form a point. As a result of their radium exposure, they were suffering horrible illness: their jawbones were disintegrating, their teeth were fracturing and falling out, and they were suffering from awful mouth and guminfections and ulcers.

Most people are exposed to radium as a result of occupational exposures from working with radioactive materials, generally by breathing in tainted dust or vapors. Uraniumminers are especially vulnerable. Radium itself is not thought to be readily absorbed through the skin, but the gamma radiation it gives off makes working near it unsafe.

If a person believes he or she has radium poisoning, they can get their urine tested for telltale radioactivity or have their breath tested for radon. Radium in the bloodstream may be removed with a chelating agent; however, once it's gotten into bones and teeth, the main medical treatment is supportive care for symptoms.

Small amounts of radium are found in coal, so people who live in coal-burning areas will be exposed to more of the radionuclide than people in other areas.

Also, radium occurs naturally in some soils and water. The EPA sets the acceptable limit for drinking water exposure at 5 picocuries per liter and 5 picocuries per gram of soil in the first 15 centimeters of soil and 15 picocuries per gram in deeper soil. Some naturally-tainted aquifers such as the Hickory Aquifer in West Texas may have many times the limit, though most water supplies have less than 1 picocurie per liter.

An intensely radioactive metallic element found (combined) in minute quantities in pitchblende, and various other uranium minerals. Symbol, Ra; atomic weight, 226.4. Radium was discovered by M. and Mme. Curie, of Paris, who in 1902 separated compounds of it by a tedious process from pitchblende. Its compounds color flames carmine and give a characteristic spectrum. It resembles barium chemically. Radium preparations are remarkable for maintaining themselves at a higher temperature than their surroundings, and for their radiations, which are of three kinds: alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays (see these terms). By reason of these rays they ionize gases, affect photographic plates, cause sores on the skin, and produce many other striking effects. Their degree of activity depends on the proportion of radium present, but not on its state of chemical combination or on external conditions.The radioactivity of radium is therefore an atomic property, and is explained as result from a disintegration of the atom. This breaking up occurs in at least seven stages; the successive main products have been studied and are called radium emanation or exradio, radium A, radium B, radium C, etc. (The emanation is a heavy gas, the later products are solids.) These products are regarded as unstable elements, each with an atomic weight a little lower than its predecessor. It is possible that lead is the stable end product. At the same time the light gas helium is formed; it probably consists of the expelled alpha particles. The heat effect mentioned above is ascribed to the impacts of these particles. Radium, in turn, is believed to be formed indirectly by an immeasurably slow disintegration of uranium.